Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
--H.L. Mencken

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Miscarriage of Justice

I'm still working out my position on the morality of the death penalty, but the fact that the judicial system can allow this to happen is a strong argument against it:

Over the course of researching my paper, I came across the case of Cory Maye. Maye today sits on Mississippi's death row, convicted of capital murder for shooting police officer Ron Jones. It's probably worth mentioning that Jones is white, and Maye is black. It's probably also worth mentioning that at the time of his death, Jones' father was police chief of Prentiss, Mississippi, where the shooting took place. It's probably also worth mentioning that the jury who convicted Maye was white...

Let's summarize: Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn't named in the warrant, and wasn't a suspect. The man, frigthened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door's been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town's police chief. He's later convicted and sentenced to death by a white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid.

You expect this sort of thing in a dime-a-dozen mystery novel, not real life. If this is truly the way things happened, I pray to God this guy gets acquitted on appeal.

UPDATE: The Agitator is all over this story if you want (or feel compelled) to hear more.

1 Comments:

I recall first reading the details of Cory Maye's case and having a strong sense of "There but for the grace of God go I." It seems to me that if someone busted into my house in the middle of the night, unidentified, then I too might take exteme measures to protect those I love.

Laura Denyes, myself, and some like minded people have been working on a petition asking or Cory Maye's release. We've tried to word the petition in a manner that conservatives, libertarians and liberals would all feel comfortable signing it. We have it up now here:

http://www.whatisliberalism.com/index.php?pageId=87667

We hope to bring attention to the case of Cory Maye. At some point this spring, we intend to print this out and mail it to the Governor of Mississippi and to all the major newspapers.